Bahrain’s king has expressed a tentative willingness to resume diplomatic ties with Iran, despite historic tensions and accusations that Tehran has stoked unrest among Bahrain’s Shiite majority.
The revelation came during a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa following a detente between the UAE and Saudi Arabia, opening the door to ties.
Bahrain, a small but geopolitically important state that is home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, has repeatedly accused Iran of destabilizing the country by stoking resentment among Shiite residents against the Sunni monarchy. Protests in 2011 were part of the broader Arab Spring movement but were crushed by the government and Iran has been partly responsible for the unrest, which it has consistently denied.
The Saudis have long aligned themselves with U.S. and British interests, most notably being the only Persian Gulf state to back attacks on the Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen after clashes in the Red Sea earlier this year.
The recent improvement in relations was marked by a visit by a delegation of Iranian parliamentarians to Bahrain last year for the International Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly, the first official Iranian visit in seven years since Bahrain severed ties with Tehran in 2015, and mirroring Saudi Arabia’s diplomatic severance.
The tentative improvement in diplomatic ties comes on the heels of a landmark China-brokered agreement last year between Iran and Saudi Arabia to reopen embassies and diplomatic missions, ending seven years of conflict.
The previous year, Iran’s relations with the United Arab Emirates, known as the region’s “Little Sparta” for its great power relative to its size, had also been repaired.
